


artifacts of the cenote

by Serindrana



Series: The Seance [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Amputation, F/F, Medical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They are and always have been separate. They share nothing in common except a single night, a city, and the endless pain of loss. Waverly Boyle is proud and cruel and rich. Callista Curnow is wary and haunted and, while comfortable now due to the patronage of a willful young empress, could never have hoped to even serve in Waverly’s shadow.</i>
</p><p>--</p><p>Sequel of sorts to <i>the carriage held but just ourselves and immortality</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	artifacts of the cenote

They are and always have been separate. They share nothing in common except a single night, a city, and the endless pain of loss. Waverly Boyle is proud and cruel and rich. Callista Curnow is wary and haunted and, while comfortable now due to the patronage of a willful young empress, could never have hoped to even serve in Waverly’s shadow.

They are separate.

They are different.

And yet they are also the same and unmistakably intertwined. They howl when they are pulled apart by the physicians at the Royal Academy, and until they are put in the same room to rest, they claw and scratch at the orderlies, caring nothing for their broken bones and tattered flesh.

They heal together, in silence, motionless.

It takes weeks for them to speak.

And when they speak, it is at oblique angles to one another. Sokolov has the orderlies keep tabs. They never speak of the night the Boyle Estate collapsed into a sinkhole a thousand feet deep. They never speak of what they cry out about in their sleep - ghosts and pain and the forces of the Void. They speak instead of the flowers sent to their room, or the sun outside the window, and they never, ever look at one another.

Time passes. Their bodies heal. Sokolov charts their progress, and when Callista Curnow begins to leave the room voluntarily and take walks on her own - short walks, never more than half an hour - he pulls her aside and asks her about the events of that night.

Her response is curt. A seance. A name of a spiritualist. The rest, she claims, she doesn’t remember.

He suspects otherwise, but there is little he can do to force the matter; she is the Empress’s favorite.

* * *

Waverly is a different story, though.

Disgraced by her association with the Regent, beset by all manner of social enemies, homeless and confined to her bed because her legs take fever, she is vulnerable. He thinks of what it will mean to science, and he goes to her while Callista is on her walk. He pries. He digs. Waverly alternately says nothing, then mocks him, then screams and tears at her sheets.

When she is scheduled to leave, in the same railcar as Callista, he finds a way to keep her there. The railcar leaves before Curnow realizes her companion isn’t coming.

The orderlies later report that it took sedation to get her out of the car upon arrival at the Tower.

Waverly is moved to a smaller room, and she receives no flowers. She cries and howls and she is not the same woman that had been recovering, slower than Callista but steadily all the same. She claws at her legs; the fever comes back. She loses one before she finally gives in, and tells Sokolov all the wretched details of the night.

He is disappointed.

He had hoped, of course, that the Outsider’s mark would be indelible on the event, but it seems a different sort of otherness descended on the house that night. He is far more interested, in the end, in the artifacts recovered from the cenote in the days and weeks after the two women were recovered.

He looks at the newest missive from the Tower, asking where Waverly Boyle has gone to because the Empress’s companion requests her company, and finally pens the answer.

Waverly is moved the next morning.

* * *

Callista did her best, in the days without Waverly, to adjust. She has told herself over and over again that it is right, and good. That they weathered a horror together, yes, but that they are fundamentally different. She thinks back to how angry she had been - at being invited, at being used, at having to tend to Waverly’s broken psyche - but the anger has faded.

Nobody else understands what happened in that house, in that sinkhole, clinging to the stone for hours until morning.

And she understands Waverly now, in a way she could never have before, in a way she’s never understood anybody. Or rather, she understands who Waverly is in this strange limbo of recovery. The Waverly of before is gone. The Waverly to come may very well infuriate her, hurt her, abandon her.

But the Waverly of now is-

Is sitting in a small side room of the Tower, and Callista cannot stand to see the roughly-hewn, poorly-fitted prosthetic filling out the leg of her trouser, barely stretching out her stocking. She thinks of Sokolov’s fierce questions about that night, and wishes she had told him herself.

She feels guilt, heavy and strangling.

So she comes to Waverly on her knees, and Waverly watches with frightened, hunted eyes, but when Callista offers her hands, Waverly takes them. They have touched only rarely since being pried apart, but this is as monumental as every time before.

They are very different, and yet they are connected. It’s inarguable. Callista takes a deep, shaking breath.

"I have missed you," she says.

Waverly nods.

"I didn’t know they’d keep you. I fought to get back."

Waverly’s brow furrows. Her voice is cracked and hoarse as she asks, “Why?”

"Because I don’t want to be without you," Callista says, bowing her head and looking away at some whorl on the fine rug.

Waverly says nothing, but slowly sinks from the chair onto the floor beside Callista, and tucks her remaining leg against Callista’s thigh. She leans her weight - light, now, from lying in bed so long - against Callista’s solidity.

Callista finds that, if she leans into Waverly in turn, they keep each other up quite nicely.

* * *

Two weeks later, Waverly has been fitted with a far better prosthetic, and Callista is the only one she trusts to help her into it. The Empress is not happy with the arrangement, but allows them to take rooms adjoining one another. Waverly gets the smaller of the two, but doesn’t mind. It means they can, sometimes, sleep tucked together. It means that Callista is never truly far away.

The panic begins to recede.

Callista’s hands slide along what is left of Waverly’s thigh, with its bandages and its puckered scar tissue, and Waverly laughs bitterly and says,

"I suppose it’s only fair that I had to lose something after all. Of my own, I mean. My sisters lost their lives. I only lost…"  _Everything else_.

Callista hums but doesn’t respond, hooking the last of the straps to the belt that Waverly now wears around her waist, over her corset. It isn’t strictly necessary, but it makes her feel more comfortable.

"I’m glad," Waverly adds, more softly, "that you didn’t have to lose anything."

Callista lifts her eyes, and Waverly reads in them surprise, and a little bit of confusion. They are the same, and connected, and yet- Waverly realizes that this is the first time she’s felt not only genuine concern for somebody else, but genuine relief and happiness.

It doesn’t create the same panic in her that her needful love for the servant boy had.

She holds her breath all the same.

* * *

It is three months and seventeen days after the seance, and Waverly once more knows what she owns, what she does not own, and what her options are. She has taken a fine townhouse not in the estate district proper - houses come up for sale there only rarely, and she has confessed that she doesn’t want to be too close to the pit that the Abbey still has not been able to fill - but closer to the Tower.

She has not spent a single night there.

Callista is quietly glad. She is learning the new Waverly Boyle, the one who has regained her regal nature, whose bones have healed and whose brow is furrowed less and less with pain and terror (though always those two appear once a day, or more, and they have not lessened, only gone quiescent). The new Waverly is beautiful, and haunted, and is unalterably connected to her. When they sit side by side, or when she eases the prosthetic off at night and her hand brushes Waverly’s inner thigh, their pulses seem to beat in time.

But Waverly has duties, has a position in the world far different from Callista’s, and that will never change. They are different.

So it is Callista who finally calls the railcar for Waverly, who helps her pack a valise - and though it could be filled with all of Waverly’s things now, it is not - and escorts her from their room. Waverly hides her worries, her fears, and Callista marvels at it.

She is very strong.

There is a bend in the hallway that hides anybody lingering in it from view (Corvo hates the spot), and Callista stops Waverly there with a light touch.

Lady Boyle turns her head.

Callista smiles, then leans in and up onto her toes. Her lips brush Waverly’s.

"Come back," she says, and Waverly nods.

"Always."


End file.
